Thursday, April 08, 2010

I haven't visited enough caves to say how this one compares to others, but it did make this top-ten list and I recommend it highly. It's also a private business that sells tickets and souvenirs, not a public park that consumes taxpayer dollars. Luray Caverns may not be a model for balancing tourism and conservation at every natural wonder in the country, but it's probably a better one than most people realize. Americans can perform a lot of wonders on their own.

His enthusiasm is understandable. I mean, they actually play Luray's stalactites with mallets! That's a wonderful example of the creative solutions you get when you unleash the power of the Free Market.

I'm assuming Miller has never been to Carlsbad Caverns, where they also sell tickets and souvenirs (just like most other national parks). As for consuming taxpayer dollars, that's a complex subject...but for whatever it's worth, a recent study claims that while Carlsbad Caverns has an annual budget of about $6 million, "the total impact of the park is almost 1,000 jobs and $17 million in income in the county."

That doesn't sound like such a bad deal to me, even if the caverns do lack spectral mood lighting, pipe organs, and an animatronic figure of Ronald Reagan welcoming visitors to the snack bar.

One can only hope that despite Miller's excruciating political correctness, his family managed to enjoy the cave for its own sake. My parents had their faults, God knows, but at least they didn't reduce the scenic wonders we visited to economic case studies.

I mean, they actually play Luray's stalactites with mallets! That's a wonderful example of the creative solutions you get when you unleash the power of the Free Market.

I decided not to follow any links in this post when I read that.

The "free market," by the way, has decimated the bat colonies in Carlsbad Caverns. I remembered a cloud of bats that formed a column that seemed to go on forever, from my childhood visit. When I went back as an adult, and it wasn't nearly the same (a paltry trickle), I thought memory was playing tricks on my until the Park Ranger said: no, the population of bats was sharply decreased, mostly due to insecticide usage sharply increasing.

Anyway, I'm sure we're better off with fewer bats and more bugs that can eat insecticide like it was candy. Or something. Maybe if we let people hammer the stalactites in the Caverns....

The "free market," by the way, has decimated the bat colonies in Carlsbad Caverns. I remembered a cloud of bats that formed a column that seemed to go on forever, from my childhood visit.

Sad to hear it, but not surprised. I went to watch the bat exodus about 15 years ago, and "a paltry trickle" describes pretty well what I saw. There were other people there who told stories like yours, described the amazing noise made by all those wings, etc.